Response to special education teacher's letter

Dear Editor,

In response to the letter, "Special education story was not balanced," that ran in the Chesterfield Observer's Jan. 23 issue, the teacher who wrote that letter was obviously missing the point of my presentation to the Chesterfield County School Board as referenced in the Chesterfield Observer article, "This abuse must stop" [Dec. 19]. Unfortunately, the minutes of the December school board meeting are not available online, and the teacher doesn't have the entire presentation available to her. The purpose of the presentation was, once again, to ask the school board to develop a general physical restraint policy to be put into place that would protect all students and provide parental notification. Her letter is actually helping me prove my point in that the Chesterfield County teachers do not follow the guidelines set forth in their current procedure.

Physical restraint, as per the procedure, is to be used only in a crisis situation when the student is in the process of hurting himself/herself or others. It is not to be used as a way to gain control of the classroom. She eludes that she has used physical restraint in her classroom. I hope this was only used in a crisis situation and that the proper safeguards were taken to ensure her safety and the child's safety. Likewise, I hope that she properly documented the restraint and notified the parents promptly.

Running into the street and into traffic is an emergency situation, and I would hope that a teacher would be brave enough to save my child's life. But that was not the case with my son nor was I was ever notified by the school system. To me, the undocumented, unreasonable and unlawful restraint is abuse, and it must stop.

Chip Greene

Chesterfield